Full Description

This paper is a case study on a situation facing Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities where awater main needed repairs, but due to its location, a convenient time for a serviceinterruption for those customers could not be determined. Historically, when a watermain needs to be shutdown for repairs, a utility either just gives advance notice of therepair and service interruption or works with customers to pick a good time for theinterruption. This had been the practice of this utility until June, 2002.In this situation, a repair needed to be made at a main line tap on a 24 inch water line thatrequired 6 restaurants, 5 hotels, an ice skating rink, and several commercialestablishments be left without water for at least 24 hours. Conversations with thosecustomers were not very fruitful in determining a convenient time for the interruptionwithin the timeframe that the repair needed to be made. Management asked that theEngineering department get involved and look for creative ways to eliminate or minimizethe customers that would loose water service. Discussions among the engineering staffled to a solution that involved an emergency connection of two existing water lines andthe installation of aboveground water service lines to all customers that provided themwith both the domestic supply and necessary fire protection. The aboveground systemwas one that was being used by the utilities' water main rehabilitation contractor inneighborhoods while existing water mains were being cleaned and lined. In this casestudy no customers lost water supply during the repair, which took more than 48 hours tocomplete. Includes figure.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 10/01/2003 Number of Pages: 5 File Size: 1 file , 2.2 MB